Utah may declare pornography a 'public health crisis'

Utah lawmakers are considering making it the first state
to declare pornography a public health crisis, similar to
cigarettes.

State Sen. Todd Weiler (R) recently introduced a legislative
resolution that would recognize a range of “societal harms” from
the pornography “epidemic.”

“I’m hoping this will start educating people that pornography is
actually addictive, that it’s harmful to families and
relationships,” says Senator Weiler in a phone interview.

Weiler acknowledges First Amendment rights to make and view
pornography.

Although the resolution does not put forward any particular
policy solution, he says he ultimately “would like to see the US
work toward an Internet that is porn free unless you opt into
it.”

The proposal has rekindled
age-old cultural battles over sexual norms and morality – but it
also pushes the conversation into a broader framework.

Some critics of the Utah resolution see it as yet another
conservative attempt to shore up heterosexual marriage as the
acceptable context for sex.

A Salon.com headline ridiculed it as “porn hysteria.” But
where some see an effort to reframe conservative morality
under the guise of public health, crafters of the legislation
point to issues from elementary school age children accessing
hard-core porn to cases of sex trafficking and child abuse.

Conservatives aren’t the only ones making the case for
considering pornography’s role in harming social well-being. Some
feminists have been working for decades to raise awareness about
what they see as pornography’s contribution to “rape culture.”

Now they are being joined by parents, pediatricians,
psychologists, and other professionals who say they are seeing
devastating impacts, especially on young people, because of the
explosion of online access to graphic and often violent images –
and exposure to pornography at younger ages.

“The porn industry has hijacked children’s sexuality, and parents
have been asleep at the wheel,” says Gail Dines, a professor at
Wheelock College and founder of Culture Reframed, which is
working to educate parents, pediatricians, and other
professionals about how to talk with children to build up
“resilience and resistance to the harms of the culture” of
pornography.

Among youths seeking help from an online treatment program for
negative impacts of pornography as of July 2015, the average age
of first exposure was 11.9.

But while some youths seek out sexually explicit material online,
the level of unwanted exposure has decreased, according to a
series of studies by the
University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research
Center.

After an initial increase between 2000 and 2005 (from 24 percent
to 34 percent of Internet users ages 10 to 17), unwanted
exposure declined by 2010, to 23 percent of users.

Pediatricians say they are seeing injuries among their young
patients that stem from the type of sexual activity commonly
depicted in porn, Professor Dines says.

Most research on the issue can only explore correlations between
pornography and behaviors such as sexual aggression, dependency
on frequent use, and difficulties sustaining relationships.

There’s an active debate about degrees of correlation, and even
more debate on whether pornography has any causal role – with
people on either side accusing those on the other of sometimes
relying on junk science.

Dines argues that the weight of evidence suggests that viewing
pornography (much of which is now the type once labeled “hard
core”) is reshaping the way boys think about sexuality and
relationships.

Much online pornography depicts anger and contempt toward women,
researchers say. In turn, the hookup culture that pornography has
helped proliferate on college campuses is “having a profound
effect on the self-esteem of young women and girls,” Dines says.

In interviews with college students, Dines has found that men
frequently tell her that their favorite sex act is something that
mimics a common scene in pornography that she and others find
degrading to women – and in some cases is leading to physical
injuries. But she says many also tell her they want to stop their
porn-viewing habits and don’t know how.

Other feminists push back against the idea that porn is by nature
misogynistic, noting that many women enjoy pornography.

During the last wave of strong feminist arguments against the
pornography industry, in the 1980s and early ’90s, “the
pornographers won that struggle and beat back any attempt to
modify public policy,” saysRobert Jensen,
an author on the subject and a journalism professor at the
University of Texas at Austin.

Porn
actresses line-up at the opening of the "Venus" erotic fair in
Berlin October 17, 2013. The event, which represents the erotic
business in the German capital, is open till October 20,
2013.REUTERS/Fabrizio
Bensch

But with the proliferation of research on teen development, brain
science, and the potential for harmful addictions, the public
health framework may get a new hearing.

Pornography addiction is not an officially recognized diagnosis,
“but it can fall under the broad category of behavioral
addictions,” says David Greenfield, founder of The Center for
Internet and Technology Addiction and a professor of psychiatry
at the University of Connecticut.

Of all the problems associated with the Internet that Dr.
Greenfield treats, he says No. 2 is pornography and other online
sexual behavior.

When it comes to young people, Greenfield says parents and others
need better education about the fact that pornography isn’t a
realistic portrayal of relationships, and that repeated exposure
can lead to harmful consequences.

That requires some adults to overcome ingrained inhibitions in
order to discuss sexuality, he says.

“We live in a culture that celebrates sexuality on an overt
level, in ads, movies, music,” Greenfield says. “On the covert
side, people are just as inhibited with regard to sexuality as
we’ve ever been. The schism … creates sexual pathology.”

Some others in the medical community say blaming pornography
distracts from the many other variables that influence sexual
behavior.

“People use the term addiction in a manipulative way, to invoke
fear,” says David Ley, a clinical psychologist in Albuquerque,
N.M., and the author of “The Myth of Sex Addiction.”

“I’m not a fan of adolescents seeing porn…. But if you tell a
teenager to be afraid of something and not do it, we are creating
a situation where that teen is going to be compelled to be
interested in it.”

His reading of various research studies leads him to conclude
that “porn plays a tiny role in impacting adolescent behavior.”

“In certain people who are already predisposed to sexual violence
… watching violent porn for them probably does increase their
risk of sexual violence,” Ley says. “But that is not most
people.”

Weiler’s proposed resolution in Utah is based on an idea put
forward by The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly
Morality in Media). The group hosted a national symposium last
year, and if Utah’s resolution passes, 10 or more states may
follow suit, Weiler says.

The footnoted version of the resolution cites a range of research
and writings on the topic, including that of Dines.

But for some critics, the underlying message still appears to be
an attempt to reaffirm religious, traditional values. One of the
concerns the resolution cites, for instance, is that pornography
is “linked to lessening desire in young men to
marry, dissatisfaction in marriage, and infidelity.”

The proposal may be “a backlash against a lot of progress we’ve
made for the LGBTQ community … in fighting discrimination” in the
state, says Susie Porter, director of gender studies at the
University of Utah in Salt Lake City.